ABOUT US

Steve Friess is a 2011-12 recipient of the prestigious Knight-Wallace Fellowship at the University of Michigan, where he will be studying the impact of the rapid expansion of Vegas-style gaming on Asia. He's a podcaster, author and Vegas-based freelance journalist who writes regularly for USA Today, The New York Times, Newsweek and many others. His column, "The Strip Sense" appears every Thursday in the Las Vegas Weekly. His books include "Gay Vegas" from Huntington Press and Knopf Mapguides' "Las Vegas."Friess co-hosts the weekly celebrity interview podcast The Strip Podcast "The Strip" with his husband, Miles Smith, the executive producer at KSNV-TV, Channel 3. For four years, Steve also co-hosted The Petcast with Las Vegas Sun education scribe Emily Richmond.

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Saturday, December 5, 2009

Sorry folks, but I just got word from Steve Wynn that he would prefer I not air the audio of our conversation. As I probably mentioned, the interview was laced with sections that were off-the-record and, while I feel I've cut those out, he asked me not to air it and I will oblige.

That said, there are two upsides:

* He's fine with me writing all sorts of pieces based on the conversation, so there will be loads of good stuff I'll post in the next few days about Bette Midler, Garth and a few other topics.

* He offered me an interview specifically for the podcast and hopefully we'll be able to do that in the next week or so.

So, instead, we're playing my lengthy and revelatory interview with MGM Mirage CEO Jim Murren in which I confront him with the hideousness of the Elvis wrap and the fact that there remains no evidence whatsoever that anyone wants to live on the Strip.

Hopefully you'll join us after all. We'll still start at about 4 -- not sure the format yet -- and we'll have Hunter Hillegas of RateVegas.Com in the studio so we can mull our reactions to the Mandarin Oriental party last night and other CityCenter-related stuff.

Join us at LVRocks.Com to listen live and chat with fellow listeners. I hope this is posted early enough that nobody feels bait-and-switched.

1 comments:

Sorry that I missed your show yesterday, but I'll catch the podcast later. I took my dad to dinner at Aureole last night for his birthday before we checked out Mandarin Oriental and Crystals at City Center.

Overall it all looks great, but it still seems like a work in progress with plenty of kinks to work out. I just LOVE the design of it all, but my dad was pretty bored at Crystals since not all the shops are open yet and most of the shops that are now open have already been in Orange County (at South Coast Plaza & Fashion Island) for some time.

Hopefully more of the stores that will open will be eye-popping, and hopefully they'll do more to make Crystals more accessible to the rest of City Center and to The Strip. The tram is a good start, but I still don't know yet how people in Aria and Vdara will get to it. And if all the stores and restaurants opening soon will just be clones of what's already available in LA & OC, how will we get these Southern Californians to come to Vegas to experience something they think they can already do at home?

Again, I do appreciate the many innovative design elements of City Center. I'm just wondering what their plan is to get people who aren't into postmodern architecture and/or high-end shopping to really appreciate this place.

THE STRIP FINALE

Below are links to the final episodes and last week of special editions of The Strip Podcast. Right-click on any of these to save and hear at your leisure. Otherwise, click on them and they should play. Enjoy, and thanks for the wonderful years.